


it leads just like a river runs

by plinys



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Fix It, M/M, Memory Loss, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 01:20:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21929011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: One of the pages is torn out and taped to the cover of the planner, with a simple message:If you ever end up in California. If you ever need anything.Call me.  Richie Tozier.[or: Eddie wakes up alone in the hospital after defeating It, and then slowly starts to forget everything else other than Richie.]
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 14
Kudos: 126
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	it leads just like a river runs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thatbroadcast](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatbroadcast/gifts).



> Your prompt about forgetting shared trauma made me think about a Richie/Eddie in a fix it where Eddie lives but they still forget things and I am a big fan of the amnesia trope so, thanks book canon for giving us that. (I may have gotten a few things mixed up between book and movie and mini series canons, but I tried to stick to the book time period and happenings loosely.)

There is a moment, when Eddie awakes in an unfamiliar hospital, that he almost forgets everything. He would blame it on the anesthesia that he had previously been under for his surgery, or just the general way hospitals always made him feel slightly uncomfortable, as if the diseases and ailments of every other hospital patient might somehow pass onto him. 

But a part of him knows better. 

He remembers - and  _ remembers _ , really isn’t that the route of it all - how things had been before, when his childhood was mostly a blur that he could not focus on too long without a resulting headache. 

Now the ache is in his chest, in his bones, in his very soul.

And despite the doctor’s insisting that he will be able to make a full recovery, Eddie knows that there is more to it than that. 

His throat aches, so long without speaking, that even the water the nurses give him is not nearly enough, but he still forces out the words, has to ask, “Did anyone… Did the people who dropped me off… Did they stay?” 

The nurses lips quirk down, and Eddie braces himself for only the mildest of disappointment. 

He should not have expected anything less, according to his doctor he had been comatose nearly a week, and he could not imagine any of them wanting to stay close to Derry that long. In fact, even now he could feel a restlessness just there under his skin. A desperate need to leave as soon as possible. 

“One of them did leave a note for you,” the nurse offers, “For when you woke up.” 

A  _ note  _ is a loose way to describe it. 

Really it’s a planner, clearly used, and left behind as the only thing that he had on hand. One of the pages is torn out and taped to the cover of the planner, with a simple message: 

_ If you ever end up in California. If you ever need anything.  _ _  
_ _ Call me. Richie Tozier _ . 

And then a nine digit phone number underneath. 

He stares at that number and commits it to memory.

That if he has nothing else, that if he forgets everything else, at least he will remember this much. 

He has to. 

He can’t forget Richie.

Not again.

He makes himself that promise, there in the relative privacy of his hospital room. 

And then, sitting there in the hospital just outside the ruins of what used to be Derry, with the steady sounds of a heart monitor keeping him company, Eddie Kaspbrak makes two lists. 

The first a list of things to remember, the story that they had all agreed to stick to in the aftermath of  _ everything  _ that had happened: 

  1. We are all childhood friends. Bill, Ben, Beverly, Mike, Richie, and I. 
  2. We all traveled to Maine to mourn the passing of another childhood friend. 
  3. I was in a car accident. 
  4. Everything is fine, and normal, and there is nothing to be afraid of. 



He stares down at the number four. 

Forcing himself to believe that. 

To believe that the only thing he really has to worry about his recovery, from the aches and pains that now keep him up at night, minor compared to what they could have been. 

A car accident. 

That was what they had told the doctors.

That is what he tells himself now, over and over again, until it sounds believable. 

The second list, is easier, a  _ to do  _ list of sorts: 

  1. Recover enough to leave the hospital
  2. Get a divorce
  3. Call Richie Tozier



The two lists, cover the spread of the month of  _ July  _ in the planner that Richie had left behind for him. Eddie’s handwriting stands out starkly against the white pages and the small messy chicken scratch notes that Richie had left for himself among the pages. 

Dates for shows in Reno and interviews that he had for the radio station he worked out. 

The picture of a normal life.

Of the lives they had all lived  _ before _ . 

Or maybe… Before wasn’t the right word.

In the middle.

In the calm before the storm. 

The storm is over now, Eddie knows that, but as he stares down at his lists until his eyes start to blur, he wonders why the feeling of peace still seems so far away. 

*

The nightmares that come following everything get so bad that his nurses rush in from time to time, concerned as his heart rate jumps, as a scream comes choked off of his lips, and Eddie can’t explain.

Can’t even begin to  _ try _ . 

The nightmarish creatures that haunt him in the dead of the night. 

But he drinks the small cup of water the night nurse left for him, and when she asks, in the quiet concerned sort of voice that can only come from a nurse at two in the morning - “Was your nightmare about your accident?” 

Eddie doesn’t know how to answer her.

Instead he simply asks, “Will you leave the light on for me? I don’t think I can sleep in the dark anymore.” 

*

He’s repeated the words  _ car accident  _ over and over again, to nurse after nurse, and doctor after doctor. It’s what his official paperwork says, the report that someone -  _ probably Richie _ , a part of his mind insists - must have filled out when they dropped him off in ER after everything happened. 

But he can tell the way whatever doctor is currently assigned to him frowns when he recites the familiar and well practiced story of his  _ car accident _ , that his story isn’t believable.

That his injuries don’t match up to the sort of thing that any normal person would be able to get under these circumstances.

But what could he say?

Certainly not the truth. 

And even now, as he tries to say the words, a joke almost, private and too himself, the words struggle to escape his lips. 

He focuses on his ragged reflection in the hospital bathroom’s mirror, two weeks worth of stubble on his face, eyes tired and red, and he  _ tries  _ to remember what exactly happened.

He knows, of course, in theory.

Knows that it wasn’t actually a car accident. 

That they had been down in the sewers, fighting  _ It _ , but then…

It’s not surprising. 

Brains work in a curious way, protecting itself, locking all those bad and terribly traumatic things away until a therapist eventually forces them out in a series of uncomfortable conversations on a couch that’s always a little overstuffed.

But there’s something.

An unease that settles under his skin. 

That reminds him that he should know  _ why _ , that he should be able to tell the doctor  _ something _ if he had really wanted to.

Instead, when his doctor comes back, all Eddie asks is, “How long until I will be released?” 

*

He crosses the first item off of his  _ to do  _ list sitting there in the Portland International Skyport. 

The coffee in his hand growing colder by the second.

His flight is delayed another hour because despite everything the universe still seems determined to work against him.

The second item on his to do list stands out starkly against the white paper. 

A reminder of what he needs to do. 

What he should have done years ago. 

_ Get a  _ _divorce_. 

*

“I don’t understand!”

She had said the same words before, back when he was leaving, running towards his demons rather than away from them. She says them now, voice raising with concern and desperation, because he had been gone for a month, insisted that the hospital didn’t bother calling her, and now returns just to leave again. 

A part of him.

The small weak part of him that has spent half of his life never remembering how to be brave, wants to stay, to stick to that which is familiar. That in some sick and twisted way is an echo of the childhood that he could never remember properly.

But he deserves more than that.

And surely, despite all of their differences, Myra deserves better than this too. 

“I already spoke to a lawyer, though you’re more than welcome to get your own-” 

“I don’t want this! Eddie bear! Please, I don’t understand! You’ve been gone for so long, and I just don’t understand!” 

He’s already told her.

The practiced and rehearsed story. 

A dead friend.

A car accident. 

Had let her hold onto him, with tears in her eyes, and wonder why he had never called from the hospital. 

“None of this makes sense,” Myra insists. “You’re not talking sense, maybe the accident, hurt your head and-” 

“I want a divorce, Myra,” he repeats the words.

Steady and sure. 

Knowing that this is what needs to be done. 

“I’m going to pack a bag, and get a hotel, and my lawyer will call you in the morning. I’ll give you whatever you want, the house, the cars, Myra, whatever it is.” 

“I want you to stay.” 

His heart aches.

It would be so easy to just stay.

It had been so easy to stay before.

Even if he always hated himself a little bit for it. 

He could just choose to ignore the list he had made for himself, to say yes and let her fuss over him. Make him all his favorite foods and a warm bath, and tomorrow Eddie could go back to his job and his otherwise uneventful life like nothing had ever happened.

So easy.

But he can’t. 

So he lies. 

Just one little lie. 

Hurting her a little bit more now, to make this whole mess a little bit more bearable. 

“There is someone else,” he tells her. Even though the lie burns a little. Even though he can see the way her heart breaks. “In Maine, I met someone else, and I’m leaving you to be with them.” 

He can’t bring himself to say  _ her _ .

At least, this way there is a grain of truth to it. 

“I don’t understand,” Myra repeats, again and again like a mantra. 

Truthfully, Eddie’s not sure if he understands either. 

*

That night, sitting in his hotel room, he adds a fifth item to his list of things to remember. 

  1. I fell in love with someone else. 



This one doesn’t feel as far from the truth as the others do. 

Not a  _ story  _ to remember. 

But a fact. 

And a phone number scrawled in nearly illegible handwriting. 

He tries for a second to close his eyes, and picture Richie as he was the last time he saw him. A vague blur of a memory at the hotel, a hand holding his that  _ shook _ ever so slightly, a whispered beg almost of  _ You have to stay alive for me, come on, Eds, just for me _ . 

But try as he might, Eddie can’t remember what Richie looks like.

Somewhere in his mind is the vaguest memory of a boy from his childhood, with wild curly hair that could never lay flat, and glasses that always had to be taped together, and a smile that always meant that  _ trouble  _ was to come.

But even the memory of who Richie had been when they were boys seems hard to focus on. 

When he opens his eyes, the phone number is still there. 

_ If you ever need anything _ . 

He picks up the hotel phone without pausing to think it through, and punches in the number to make the long distance call to Los Angeles. 

Waits as the phone rings… And rings… And rings.

And instead of Richie’s voice on the other end of the line, a small beep comes, and the instructions to leave a message if he wants to. 

But Eddie hangs up before the instructions ever finish. 

_ I feel in love with someone else _ .

The words he had written.

A reminder of the story he was sticking to.

But as he tries to think of Richie, as his heart weighs with disappointment that his call was not answered, Eddie’s not so sure that those aren’t the only true words in this entire fucking planner. 

*

His lawyer heaves out a sigh. 

“Tell me again what happened.” 

Eddie’s had practice saying this now.

Again and again. 

So long that it feels like the truth.

That a part of him can’t be certain that it  _ isn’t  _ the truth. 

“I was in Maine, with childhood friends, to mourn the passing of another friend,” Eddie says.

This part is always the easiest.

Always the most true.

Though if it weren’t for the names listed in his planner, Eddie’s not certain he could have said who those friends were. Their faces become more of a blur as the weeks go on, and  _ fuck  _ Eddie knows that he should remember. That this part is important. But he feels much like the way he does meeting a client at work, a face, no matter how important it is, often fades the longer you go without looking at it. 

“I was in a car accident, a coma for a week afterwards,” Eddie continues. 

A car accident. 

And yet he feels no anxiety when he sits behind the wheel of a car.

No nervousness or panic when another car doesn’t slow down in time. 

No bracing himself for impact. 

The only time he feels terrible and anxious is when it rains, locking himself up in his hotel room, refusing to go out, an ache settling deep inside of his bones, instead of his worn down soul, trapped him in place, only willing to even consider venturing out, with the flashlight that he had bought recently in his hand. 

The nightmares were always worse on rainy days. 

“And there was someone else-” 

“Another woman,” his lawyer prompts. 

That was what Myra had accused him off. Taking the words that he had told her, in his desperation to convince her to let him leave, to be truth. 

His lawyers had insisted that he could change his tune. 

That infidelity and no prenup meant that Myra would get nearly everything in divorce.

But somehow that idea seems to refresh him, the chance to start completely now. 

“Not a woman,” Eddie says, voice smaller than he would like, eyes focused on the table, instead of on what he  _ knows  _ will be a look of disapproval on his lawyer’s face.

“Fuck,” the other man lets out a breath, “Kaspbrak, I really wish you hadn’t told me that. This is going to make everything so much more difficult.” 

*

He doesn’t sleep now.

Can’t.

Not without sleeping pills that blur everything away.

Because the nightmares are always there.

The ones that he can never remember in the morning, but that still feel so close, so real, as if every second he might wake up and be back there… Back in those… Again.

His head aches, a pounding the keeps him awake, curled up on his side, as Eddie tries to breathe.

Tries to tell himself the one  _ lie  _ that is hardest to process. 

Everything is fine.

And normal.

And there is nothing to be afraid of. 

*

They sign the final papers in his lawyer’s office. Myra gets the house, and the cars, and more than enough money to keep herself happy and well comforting for a good many years to come and Eddie…

Gets just enough to get as far away from New York City as possible. 

“You could have told me,” Myra insists, standing there in the hallway outside the office.

After it’s all said and done, after the paperwork has been signed. 

She’s talking about something else.

_ Someone else _ . 

The reason this settlement was so rushed with everything going in her favor. 

“Why? It’s not as if it would have changed anything.”

Her lips press together, silent disapproval, he’s been getting a lot of that lately. 

She doesn’t have an answer for him.

He doesn’t have an answer for her either.

So they part ways without looking back, without hesitating for another moment, and as Eddie takes the elevator down to the first floor he wrestles his planner out of coat pocket, and crosses a red line through the second item of his to do list. 

*

There’s a little girl at the airport, with a backpack shaped like a turtle.

A child really.

Nobody Eddie would ever know, nothing important, but he can’t tear his eyes away from the child’s backpack. 

Horror, dread,  _ fear _ , overwhelming him. 

So intense that the headache that’s always there comes back, spinning, crashing overwhelming him. He needs to head towards his gate, his flight will be boarding soon, but instead Eddie steps into one of the small airport stores. 

Desperate to be anywhere but under the gaze of the black plastic eyes of that child’s backpack. 

He busies himself grabbing a water bottle, and a bottle of aspirin, something to quell the sudden and overwhelming headache, and heads towards the checkout. 

Only to freeze at the sight of a book set up on a small display of recommended reading for the busy traveler who might have failed to pack of book of their own. It’s a thick book that his eyes settle on, pushed off to the side of the display, an overstocked novel that didn’t seem to sell well:

_ The Dark  _ by Bill Denbrough. 

There’s something familiar about it’s cover.

Maybe he’s read it before. 

Or maybe… 

“Will that be all,” the man behind the checkout counter asks. 

“Actually, hold on, there’s one more thing.” 

*

“Richie Tozier.” 

He repeats the name from where he’s written it in his journal. 

Sits there in the Los Angeles airport unsure of where to go from here. 

It’s been a month since his messy divorce.

But there was one thing left to do. 

One thing on his to do list. 

So he slides the quarters into the airports payphone, and hopes for a miracle, for - “Hello? Richie Tozier here, who is calling?” 

The relief he feels is almost too much to process. “It’s Eddie.”

“Who?”

“Eddie-”

“I don’t…” 

And then he tells the lie that he’s spoken so long that it feels real - “We were childhood friends? We met a few months ago at another friend’s funeral and then I was in a car accident and-”  _ I think I’m in love with you, I think I’ve always been  _ “-And then you said, I could call you if I ever made it to LA and needed a place to stay so, I…” 

He falls silent.

If Richie doesn’t remember him then…

Fuck, Eddie barely remembers Richie.

Couldn’t pick him out from a crowd.

But he knows, some part of his soul, knows Richie, would know him by heartbeat alone, and he knows that he has to do this. That fate and  _ fucking turtles  _ want him to do this. 

“Wait? Eddie Kaspbrak?” 

“Yes, yes, that’s me. I wasn’t sure if you’d remember.” 

“I didn’t,  _ fuck _ , why didn’t I-” 

“I’m at LAX.” 

“I’ll be there in an hour.” 

*

They drink.

That night.

The same way they drank all those months ago, the last time they were reunited, but it’s different now. Just the two of them, out on Richie’s back balcony, deck chairs, and an ocean stretched out in front of them.

The stars glittering against the water and… 

“Sometimes,” Richie says, voice soft and a little unsure. “Sometimes I have nightmares that don’t make any fucking sense, and my agent’s always on my ass about going that fucking funeral and coming back looking like hell but I…” 

“There’s more to it,” Eddie says. 

Thinking of the book in his carryon. 

A story that felt far too familiar. 

Echoes of a childhood he still can’t remember now matter how much he focuses and tries. 

“I don’t know what but there’s more to it,” Eddie insists. 

“At least, you’re here, at least I remember you.” 

And for now…

That will be enough. 

And in the morning, when Richie blinks at him for a few minutes, before the memory of who he is, and who they are settles in again. A process that will repeat for years to come. 

Eddie will still tell himself that this is enough. 

That they are fine.

And normal.

And that there is nothing to be afraid of. 


End file.
